AND SO IT BEGINS…

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Promote agriculture among young people

Lillian Beauttah was one of the six finalists of the GFAR and YPARD’s Youth Argripreneur Project, who co-founded the social enterprise Afrika Jilishe[1], whose aim is to increase the resilience and adaptive capabilities to climate change of nomadic pastoralists and other communities within the ASALs ( Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) by making use of high tech, low cost, and innovative solutions. Her YAP proposal is to build “The African Desert Greenhouse”, an artificial, closed ecosystem that creates viable crop growing conditions requiring a minimal amount of water. Lillian was also able to better engage in social media campaigning activities to ensure her project gained support. In addition, she has now has a mentor to help guide her during this upcoming period and make sure her project does succeed.

And now, it is 5 months later and she continues to relate her experience thus far…

What happens when you take a concept, add a generous amount of seed funding and a dash of well-targeted mentorship to it ?

Chaos…the organised variety, that is.

6 months post-GCARD 3 and the desert greenhouse that I made my YAP proposal about is finally taking shape. Here’s a brief look into its genesis.

Partner Canvassing

There would be no use building the greenhouse if we had no potential customers lined up. Our thoughts on who would make the best early adopters were centred around;

Whether the school was within a drought prone region – to be a candidate, the school would have to either be within an already established feeding program or suffer from the fluctuation of food prices within periods of drought.

Distance from Nairobi and accessibility – a closer site would allow us to make regular visits during the trial period.

Whether the school incorporated Agricultural and Business studies within its curriculum – having the greenhouse would be a unique value addition even to the students’ studies.

Whether the school is within a fenced compound – this contributes heavily to the security factor.

On visiting Merrueshi School in Kajiado County, not only was our criteria met, but the school’s patron, chairman and headmaster were generous with information and genuinely seemed interested in our approach to climate smart agriculture.

Site Canvassing

With a potential school partnership secured we moved on to the next stage, one that I thought would be everything but mind-numbingly difficult—securing land to set up a prototype. Our criteria for appropriate land included;

Within Nairobi environs or close outskirts – the build and subsequent monitoring would require us to make daily trips.

Water (preferably piped) and electrical amenities available – One might wonder why we preferred to work with those already available when our final models would be completely off the grid? We felt that it would be easier to move from the known to the unknown in terms of factors for success then reverse engineer our results in terms of water requirements (thus how big a reservoir our final model would require) and electrical capacity (how many solar panels our final model would require).

Affordability – with regards to lease per season for a 6.0m x 11.0m plot

Accessibility – daily travel in what is not a particularly high car especially during the rainy season should be possible

Climatic conditions – similar to those of arid and semi arid conditions

We hadn’t anticipated that two months in we’d still be on the search for the ideal plot of land and that accessibility would have played such a huge role. From extremely poor road conditions to perfect conditions up until it rains, we saw it all. Early in we’d seen the opportunity of leasing our greenhouses from institutions that were no longer in use but as it turns out they weren’t willing to lease out to outsiders. We then pivoted into the option of leasing land from schools in Nairobi using the same criterion we’d previously established for a partner school. We packaged this proposal as a co-curricular activity to further engage students in schools with Business and Agriculture student clubs with the added benefit of the school’s self-sufficiency on the food production front.

To our utter disappointment the most ideally located school already had a greenhouse and weren’t willing to let us use a portion of their field for another. A factor that we never expected was the rigourous nature of the Kenyan Education System that dictates school management. In the event that our trying to engage students in this as as co-curricular activity or even the construction process of the greenhouse itself might in any way hamper the final year students’ studies, schools would not even consider our project.

Finally at the end of our rope, we settled on pursuing a lead from an unlikely source. This plot of land was located an hour to forty five minutes out of Nairobi in the up and coming town of Kitengela. Not exactly ideal due to distance and evening traffic that would certainly be against us, but at this point in time we were out of options.

Best decision we ever made.

The property’s owner was hugely welcoming and willing to allow us to make use of his land and amenities without any cost due to his commitment to see the youth in interesting ventures succeed.

Initially the idea was to build the structure and design the sensory tech from scratch but a few months into the entrepreneurship game, I understood that that was a poor idea. Why? My mind had been opened up to the power of ‘ Outsourcing’ whose cousin ‘ Do it All’ is actually a factor that has led to the downfall of many ‘once -an-enterprise(s)’

Identifying an expert for the two respective structural builds was not as difficult as I’d expected. What made this exercise difficult was the unfamiliar design and exact specifications that I was proposing to the builders.

My method to get us all on the same boat was simple but I feel effective. It encompassed running through the following with the builders and material suppliers;

Design – has this been fully comprehended and what amendments from their expertise would they propose?

Materials – approximate cost, quantity and variety

Transport – cost of this to site (only after you incur charges for your own construction does this factor of production become very evident )

Labour – number of men required

Rate – per man ( once again only after you run your own construction site does it hit you that this rate should also include a meal and water )

Time frame – number of days

Start date

Currently we’re done with the first phase and making the necessary preparations to embark on the second and third that would require us to import most of the materials.

The three months of the build have taught me not only the value of patience with yourself and others in the day’s failures but also the beauty and joy that comes when you crawl into bed tired and a bit dusty after a day of building your empire.

Blogpost by Lillian Beauttah – limobachi(at)gmail.com – one of six finalists in the Youth Agripreneurs Project, a pilot project targeting young agricultural entrepreneurs (“agripreneurs”), co-organized by GFAR and YPARD. The YAP Finalists launched their projects during the #GCARD3 Global Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, 5-8 April 2016. Read Lillian’s original YAP proposal here.

Photo credits: Lillian Beauttah

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Perfil del Mentor y del Aprendiz

Professionals want to share; youth wants learn; that’s why the platform arises. Besides being a platform, EduMala is a visionary, dynamic and innovative idea. So we encourage you to be the part of it. If you would like to know more about our program, or interested to join as mentor (for particular session), please send us an email to mentoring@edumala.com.

We all need experienced mentors for our starts up to be successful. The entrepreneurial mentoring program could not come at a better time and I consider myself extremely lucky to be selected into the program. Specifically, information on business model canvas from my mentor has been very applicable while I was drafting my poultry business model.

My expectations coming to the online mentoring program for young women entrepreneurs is to grow my business to the extent of being recognised internationally. In addition, i want to radically inspire more youths to passionately go into poultry farming as a business.

The online mentoring program for young women entrepreneurs is of great deal to me. This is because as a young entrepreneur who entered into business with no practical experience i need a lot of trainings, coaching and mentoring. The mentoring is the Perfect platform for me to grow and expand and in turn reach more and more people and help them grow and expand as well.

I would encourage my fellow youth to not only think of getting a job after graduating from school, instead they should think differently by creating jobs. Above all I would like to urge institutions and government to help youth who are showing interest in farming by providing with them financial support.

“My expectations from this program is to contribute to raising incomes of the rural woman society and to give them brilliant ideas about further impacts of their activity for developing natural resources through assisting and teaching them to develop their own projects. Under this program I would like to give them opportunity to develop their ability under my leading skills. “

“With a background in political science and international affairs, I believe I have a compelling story to young Ghanaian girls that no matter your background, you can play a significant role in the agribusiness sector.”

I believe that the online mentoring program is one of the best platform for promotion and empowerment of women who want to be self-dependent. Also, being mentored by experts who are already in the field of Agro-Business Promotion will give me support, strength, confidence and knowledge to attain the vision that our company has envisioned for a sustainable Nepal in vegetable crop production

“I am deeply involved in Dairy from the last five years wherein I look after Cow Health and Nutrition part of Dairy Management, which are my key work areas.Dairy Farming has its own challenges and to become an efficient milk producer on a commercial scale, one needs to have very good know how on livestock management, fodders and cattle health issues. “